David Ayers

Well I read this thread because, based on the title, I was shocked by the thought that an SUV might roll over. How could that possibly happen, I wondered. Actually I have no idea why people drive these things. They handle like a garbage truck and flip over just turning into the drive.

Best wishes, Tod. Feel free to bitch away - the rest of us do!

I didn't see the word 'vinyl' anywhere. Is he going to reissue any of the old titles, or is the whole point that he never bought them outright anyway so the label doesn't own anything and can't reissue? The original releases are very good quality vinyl, marred only by special rice paper inner sleeves which seem to stick to the vinyl if stored under pressure.

PS NOT who I said, who was NOT my first thought. PPS I don't care either - now if the 2for1 TOCJ sale at early music had been a hoax then I really *would* have been angry.

Actually it's obvious who it was. Look at the language of the original post.

Of course, with a name like Chicken Shack, and abuse of our collective love of Larry Young, we just have to ask ourselves: who do we know who hates ORGAN BANDS - ? Pass me my pipe, Watson.

Whoever did this has obviously penetrated our mindset and now knows that he can twist us around his little finger. We're DOOMED!

Just an average day's viewing for Mr Tanno. Mole Jazz will never seem the same. Though you can sometimes see Bill Oddie in there. (In joke for Brits). Hey I also like the optical illusion on the ebaumsworld site. Move your head forwards and backwards while looking at centre dot. Oops - I tried to post it and failed. You'll just have to go there.

Ok I've calmed down now.

Woo Hoo!

Bring on the spray ons: Spray on stocking fashion in Japan Meanwhile I'm gonna get me that spray on Cecil Taylor hair...

Someone reported on the old BNBB that releases by Evan Parker's PSI records (hosted by Martin Davidson's Emanem records) were CD-Rs and not genuine CDs. I recently wrote to Martin Davidson about this and he emphatically denied it. Because it was reported as fact on the old BNBB I had simply believed the story (and was quite annoyed as I am a big Parker enthusiast). So, for the record, all PSI and Emanem releases are emphatically genuine CDs. This clears up my confusion at least. Link to Emanem (and PSI)

Once interest in Living History begins to tail off, mine will be next on the shelves.

You're welcome. This is an extract from my forthcoming autobiography: 'I wasn't born this way!': Some Episodes in the Life of a Limbless Man. As you can probably tell it is from one of the earlier chapters.

Did I ever tell you guys about the time I was hired to floss a croc? Well, it all started out after one of those drinking binges where we were dropping scorpions in each others beer - you know, just for a laugh - when out of nowhere I felt a pair of giant mandibles driving into my leg. 'The bugger snatched my leg' I cried, and limped off after the biggest bat you have ever seen, trailing my leg and an assortment of other limbs it had snatched from equally unwary victims from its mouth (not a bad day's haul for a giant unexpectedly-mandibulated limb-snatching bat). Well obviously without a leg and with poison coursing through my veins (what a lark- they told me my face went blue! Good job I was pissed I might have died!) I couldn't keep up with the bat. Now, you may not know that a lyger or liger, the sterile cross between a lion and tiger, lacks the gene controlling growth. Strange but true. I happened to know this, and as I raced after the bat this smidgeon of information came rushing back to me - a survival instinct, who knows? - as I stumbled over my friend Eric's pet liger. Well, quick as a flash I pulled my croc killing blade out of the pant pocket on my remaining leg and sliced off Ovaltine's (yes, the lyger was called Ovaltine) two collossal b*******s. They were like rugby balls. Now, I am sorry for Ovaltine but he was sterile and in a way they were no real loss. Fashioning a slingshot out of the recently shed skin of a 30 foot reticulated python I was able to whirl the first of the two organs I had ruthlessly hacked off Ovaltine around my head in a clockwise direction (it weighed about 11 pounds). Plumph! It had shot through the air and landed in the scrub off to the right of the bat's current position. Of course, I thought, as a right hander I should have been whirling it anti-clockwise! Naturally, I realised my first attempt with this vast improvised slingshot might fail, and that is why I had severed both of Ovaltine's jobbies ( I might add that Ovaltine, who had been unable to stand for three years due to his vast bulk, was for some weeks after this able to hobble around like a penguin on heat until once again succumbing to weight gain and collapsing to the ground in the exact spot where I had first fallen over him. Anyway I digress). So I had a second shot - and I knew it was my last. To cut a short a long and fascinating tale, the second rotund missile belted through the atmosphere and smacked straight into the bat's belly. The bat released my leg... but as its belly split the spiders it had snacked on earlier that day were spilled from its gut in a writhing mass... at the same time the first Ovaltinean missile had by a freak accident landed on a nest of giant hornets who flew angrily into the air... Gentle reader - what did I do next? Rush downhill into the sea among the stingrays, the jellyfish and the sharks? Rush uphill, up the steep mountainside, trip over an unexpected llama and fall to my doom? Or was there enough left of the reticulated python skin for me to fashion a temporary armor to hold off the hornets and spiders while I reattached my leg using only the spit of the dodo well known for its healing qualities among primitive tribespersons but alas neglected today? And how did I get hired as a croc flosser after all of this? Gentle jazzers - more in my next missive. Don't miss the missive!

Jim I wasn't (at all) arguing with what you were saying, and I certainly do realise that it is hard to argue a judgement. I also think you are correct to describe your judgements and to query the judgement of others. And I also think that, in general, when you think someone has missed something in whatever way it is a good idea to point them back at what they might have missed (in the same way am I always urging people not to overestimate particular things. I think all of this is called criticism and is legitimate. I prefer any amount of this to the routine disclaimer and false modesty which states 'this is my opinion and it is purely subjective', because when people say that what they mean is 'this is my opinion and for me it is absolutely true, it lies only inside my head and can't be interrogated by YOU, YOU, or YOU - because I am the consumer and I have final authority'. So to absolutely validate subjectivity is simply to misrecognise the world - the world in which what one subjectively thinks counts for very little. But this analysis doesn't end here...

My question about judgement (which come from a professional in the area of aesthetic theory and therefore should be attended to according to Jim's theory;)) is just a suggestion that it is hard to work out and properly theorise the difference between technically-expert and non-technically-expert judgements. Judgements of beauty which are purely receptive are clearly different from judgements which are through technical knowledge in some way identified with the process of artistic production. Anyone who has ever produced art of any kind knows that more is about feel than anything else, even if the technical means must be in place, they are ONLY in place in order to achieve the aesthetic result. Incidentally, this is why some improvisers play only themselves, not self expression simply but also the technical limitation of having evolved only to play the music you have decided to play. What I also think is that it is important in life not to get bogged down attending to things that are just OK on the grounds that yo might be missing something. call what is OK pants and move on. Be bold in your rejections. Concentrate on the sublime and don't settle for less. You can always come back and check out what you passed over. Oh and don't fall for the overworn spiritual-musical 'journey' metaphor. Have you ever been on a train?

Hell, they are sending me back behind closed doors.

Even my mother, whose hands are not of the most flexible, has no problem getting out the most recalcitrant CD by just shoving in the centre 'til it pops out. And it 'never did her any harm' etc.

I realise that my many supporters did not want to embarass me by filling this thread with nominations for me - so I'll save them the embarassment and just nominate - ME ME ME

Chuck said they were in "the 2000s" of a 2500 issue.

This argument about opinion concerning music as between musicians and non musicians looks a bit different if transported to another world. Lets say, the movies. Now, I do know how to play an instrument, but I don't know jackus shittibus about making a movie. Even knowing nothing about it, I tend to know what I think about movies. Moreover, if someone who had made a few movies told me x was great (x being regarded by me as so much poo) I would tend to take no notice. I think we'd all agree on this. Now, I don't think that analogies between the arts can be easily made, but I wonder how the analogy would work in this case. I wonder why this is such a difficult matter to grasp.

Thanks Brownie - I think I can see why that needs tidying up! Dmitry - as you gathered from the useful link - this is indeed tatu. My signature quotation is from an American interview. It was the girls' reply when they were asked if all the mock-lesbian stuff was not very politically correct. I quite liked the way they transformed that question into their own terms. (J Larsen came up with an even better one - and B3-er found an even better use for it - here, if you can be bothered to trawl through...)

Arts workers are perhaps not the only workers in irregular employment who can benefit disproportionately from a welfare system drafted with longer term work patterns in mind. I am not surprised that the French Government has finally got around to this.

Doesn't read the liner notes and memorise personnel and dates ???? Next thing you'll be telling me he just listens to the music and thinks about it. What a bozo.